When a customer buys a new telephone set having data storage capabilities, it is left as a manual exercise for the customer to load information into the telephone set. For example, after a customer buys a telephone set having a speed dialing capability, the customer is left to manually load a speed dial list into the telephone set.
Other speed dialing lists are maintained within a telephone network. Regardless of whether the speed dialing list is maintained within the telephone set or the telephone network, management of speed dialing lists is left as a manual responsibility of the end users.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,883,944 and 5,887,054 disclose plug-and-play telephone sets which communicate to each other using a peer-to-peer protocol over a control channel. A resulting telephone system is self-configurable, meaning that each telephone set and/or adjunct bids for use of a system resource. These patents explicitly disclose that there is no centralized processing or control point to provide the plug-and-play functionality.